ANTHONY GALLAGHER: Student of
Teenage Culture
He
called it his 4 o'clock conference call. It happened
every Friday afternoon.
That was when Anthony Gallagher placed the call to the
Adamses --Katie, Liz and Jay. Sometimes Peter Adams might
participate, but he was only 7. Mr. Gallagher would start
off, "What's up?" and they'd go from there.
Mr. Gallagher, 41, an energy broker at Cantor
Fitzgerald, handled a lot of important phone calls during
his workdays, but none meant more to him than his weekly
conference call to his nieces and nephews, the
15-year-old twins, Katie and Liz, and 13- year-old
Jay.
Mr. Gallagher had only recently married, at the age of
40, and during his bachelor days he had cultivated a
tight and unending relationship with the children of
Suzanne Adams, one of his sisters. "He just loved them,"
said his other sister, Carolyn Gallagher. "When he was
planning to get married, he even asked them if it was
O.K. They gave him the thumbs up."
To stay in the loop, he knew he needed to be wired
into teenage interests, so Mr. Gallagher faithfully
watched MTV. "He would talk to them about Eminem and all
that," Carolyn said.
And he did what they did. At a family barbecue at the
Adams household over the Labor Day weekend, there was a
contest to see who could make the biggest splash off the
diving board of the pool. Mr. Gallagher was up there
doing massive cannonballs.
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